top stories this hour here on our t.v. explosions unflinching in the syrian capital as rebels announce a full scale offensive against the mascot's that's amid another diplomatic attempt to end the crisis. america's sends its own agents to patrol britain's court at the london olympics well u.k. is forced to draw more troops and police to security contractors more than they can chew. and h.s.b.c. one of the world's biggest banks says it's sori football drink billions in international drug money is what it's doing business with saudi arabia and terrell sponsors. but it's the latest news from a new center here in moscow not a cross over to our washington studios once again and join the alyona show.

welcome to the la nischelle where i get real headlines with none of the mersey i can live in washington d.c. now it's nice to have two great panels for you first we'll talk about the economy on our monday hangover from outsourcing and free trade agreements to the looming fiscal cliff and tim geithner's role in live or christian dorsey and james poulos are going to join us then we'll have a foreign policy panel hillary clinton's in israel fear mongering about iranian missiles are still in full of fact and what's new libya mali and syria all have in common all they care of and robert farley are going to help us hash that out it will have all of that and more frayed and i concluded a dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media decided to miss.

art so it's another day of obsessive campaign coverage and the debate that's taking center stage right now for the mainstream media is about is about bain capital and mitt romney and the obama campaign's attacks on mitt romney and bain capital over the outsourcing of jobs. battle over bain just won't go away some of the companies bain invested in send jobs overseas the has said that at the time when the obama campaign is accusing him of being part of a company that i was source of jobs that he was not there we know he's had a swiss bank account we know he's exported jobs to china the attacks on mitt romney's business career at bain capital's begin to take a toll so now romney turns the tables and will attack president obama for quote crony capitalism the bickering over bain the battle over bank taxes outsourcing he's taking fire over his days at bain capital from the president the president will be going after mitt romney saying that under his tax policy eight hundred thousand jobs could be shipped overseas and romney's team pushes back hard in the

latest charges from the president's campaign about romney's time at bain capital been accused by the obama campaign and back in the primaries as well by his opponents then of sending jobs overseas team obama's repeated attacks on his record at bain outsourcing jobs as part of being accountable and the president continue to drive that message today. now one hand this kind of stuff is always a little disturbing because the mainstream media stops choosing stories on its own they stop using their judgment to disseminate with what really matters and what doesn't what their viewers need to know now you see the campaign releases a new ad and they take that direction they roll with it and they make that their top story of the day you have to follow every single attack ad that's put out there people but this is what happens when you have an establishment serving press they let the boundaries of the debate be set for them rather than doing it themselves and so what we've seen here is

a lot of partisan back and forth over whether or not the attacks against mitt romney are fair whether or not it was a dig to make an ad where he was singing a patriotic song really poorly nothing that actually affects american workers on a day to day basis but the truth is that number one of the candidates in. not obama the sitting president or mitt romney the want to be are really against the outsourcing of jobs this is something that i tried to bring up yesterday when i was on up with chris hayes. if you look at i think you know what the president is doing right now he's by no means a champion for the american worker and if you look at for example this transpacific partnership agreements being negotiated with waiter nine different countries behind closed doors at the end of the day this could be the largest trade deal in u.s. history and you have some labor unions a.f.l.-cio that's come out and taken a stance against it saying that it's actually going to hurt american labor but for the most part we get back to this issue of i think that the labor unions are obviously going to vote for the president anyway so they're not making as big of

a fuss as they should where he's supporting the exact same exact same policies as republicans. so not only is the president negotiating behind closed doors don't forget he's also saying side three other trade agreements just at the end of last year with south korea panama and colombia on top of that members of congress are hinting at the next free trade agreement might be with tunisia and there's plenty of debate to be had as to whether or not free trade agreements are good or bad or whether outsourcing is good or bad or inevitable in a globalized economy and we're going to get into that during our first panel tonight but before we get there can we just say let's cut the crap let's stop only thinking in terms of left versus right and see what's actually in front of our eyes while mitt romney and barack obama certainly have their differences both of these men support free trade policies that do impact american workers and take more jobs abroad neither one is really a champion for the american worker in those terms how happy we could inject that into the discussion on sunday's show which by the way we will talk more about later

on it's night's program since as usual some people were just beside themselves that i a russian propagandist was allowed on and i said the c. and others were upset that they thought i had sold out some address all those questions later but the problem. with the talking heads on the mainstream media the only promote one party's interest or the others is that you rarely get any real talk nobody wants to rise above admit the truth if it hurts their guy when they don't we can't have honest discussions and debates and people aren't really being informed about what their political options are and if you ask me that's one of the most damaging results of having a mainstream media that's completely removed itself from the real world and instead only exists in a bubble between washington d.c. and new york city a mainstream media that only allows the opinions of well polished pundits to be aired at the end of the day you lose because the mainstream media chooses to miss.

all right so it's only monday but there's plenty to talk about because the news does not stop over the weekend and so that means it's time for our monday hangover now we're going to start off tonight with a number of economic issues we'll continue to talk about the president's attack on romney over outsourcing and yet the hypocrisy in his own policies like supported nafta or the t p p maybe we should just admit that there is no champion for the american worker out of the two then democrats are gearing up to take the tax cut battle all the way into next year meaning that they're willing to let us go off this so-called fiscal cliff if need be but is the entire idea of a fiscal cliff totally overblown and it turns out the while the new york that timothy geithner did try to address live or problems back in two thousand and eight but the documents show that his recommendations basically came straight from the banks so grab your pain pills and some water so every monday hangover. you're going

to. be. joining me to discuss this tonight is christian dorsey director of external and governmental government affairs at the economic policy institute and joining us remotely is james pullos producer at huff post live and i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and before we get into it let me just start with this clip right that everyone keeps playing today which is this new ad that's been put out attacking mitt romney take a look. i'm barack obama and i approve this message oh beautiful for spacious all right. all are for. to. go.

all right so the way that everyone else has chosen to look at this and then address it is the typical partisan finger pointing and what not but let's go back to what i was just talking about which is the president's policies when it comes to free trade do you think christian that the president actually has the right to put out ads like this well you know look during election season if you're going to make your criteria whether or not they have the right and most of what you hear on the airwaves is probably out of bounds yes the president has not been a champion of the american worker when it comes to the kinds of policies that would really help them retain jobs in this country but it's certainly clear that he romney presidency would be far worse for the american worker it's kind of like the horse is out of the barn anyway but who's going to give it more of a push and i think that's the that's the real issue that american workers confront why can't we james you know just just have a little honesty why can't we just have both left and right and everybody just say you know what we support these free trade policies you know that i want to get your both your takes on whether you think how much they hurt or helped the american worker well it would be nice it would be nice if the president came out and said

look this is what i've been secretly negotiating trade agreements with with foreign corporations that would give them more power than they already have over sovereign american law but he's not going to do that and you know i think radley balko. post made an interesting point when he said ok if mitt romney really has outsourced all these jobs then i guess i feel a little bit better about him since he's improved a lot of the people in abject poverty there's a much deeper more complicated discussion that we could be having a frank discussion. given the way barack obama and mitt romney want to run their campaigns it's not going to happen so how much does something like that which you know like i said it could end up being because it has this option in it for extension could end up being the largest trade agreement in u.s. history it could total totally the war the impact of nafta something that candidate barack obama so that he would work hard right away to repeal and which certainly backtracked on. a month or so into office i shared dreams is discussed that you

don't get honesty during these campaigns and maybe i'm a bit cynical i just don't expect honesty anymore but when it comes to free trade when it comes to outsourcing these are parts as you said alone in setting this segment up this is part of our new global economy it's not going to go away any time soon the question is what then do you i mean do you think then that it's that it's inevitable does the president not have a choice when it comes to organizing so many more free trade agreements no no he certainly doesn't need to accelerate what is already a naturally occurring phenomenon and he certainly does not need to ignore bad behavior china for example not naming china a currency manipulator is abetting and moving towards this free trade outsourcing globalized regime and accelerating it at the expense of the american worker without taking the necessary policy steps to to make the landing a little bit softer for u.s. workers and and manufacturers james what do you say i mean is this is it inevitable that you eventually just have to give in and do labor unions in the u.s.

just have to realize you know what tough luck this is what the economy looks like these days and you can't exactly expect for you know her policies to protect you forever. well i'm not sure the labor unions are really doing as much as they could do to represent the true interests of the american labor either but here's the problem what's what seems to be inevitable is that this financial system that we're trying to bail out that we're trying to find ways of reforming to preserve is going to collapse of its own weight before we have the opportunity to really reform it one conversation that we could be having that we won't be having is you know why is that the governments have worked together with banks not only to massage the rate but also to do things like artificially lower the price of gold at a time when countries like china are hoarding gold at a time when india is looking for non currency ways of paying for iranian oil that it's importing because it needs that oil we're in danger of losing out on our own financial system at a time when countries at the margins are figuring hey if we move first we can get

off the sinking ship and find another way of preserving our own economies are fine let's have that discussion you know you have to say we will be having it but if you want to talk about alive or if you want to talk about the other things that james mentioned to you you know how do you look at what's going on with within the inflation of the library rates or overall i mean i kind of i would like to say that maybe this is why you can have banks at their own interest rates either you know if everybody's going to be colluding on this or i gather maybe this is why timothy geithner should have just passed on recommendations that the banks proposed to him well you know looking at a couple of these things you know one first the first thing that the library scandal tells us is that anyone who still holds forth to the idea that markets are their own best regulators and are the best way to move forward economically unfettered by regulation they're kind of like the flat earth as we're when we you know when that movement was was the revolving around the earth markets in and of themselves are made up by people individuals and institutions that sometimes have

corrupt interests that are not my interest and they sometimes screw up the system and do so illegally this points to stronger more effective government regulation this is. something that is true in the united states it's true in europe it's true everywhere and the fact that this happened in such a way in such a crucial crucial financial element as the rate which affects virtually every financial transaction that the world has truly truly trouble around is that we have neither strong nor effective regulation or regulate tours as we have obviously learned from this entire debacle i mean what do you say james you think that tim geithner's should be fired. well you i think you should go and this is an important point you can have all the glorious regulations in the world that you would ever want to have and if you're a year later they're in bed with the people that they're regulating it's not going to work free markets free markets can cause market distortions when there are no laws but there are always some laws and the real problem here is that the financial

system we've got in place right now is not the consequence of a free market it's a consequence of a relationship between public power and private power that is so intimate and so cozy and so secret that when it distorts and manipulate the market the rest of us suffer and they build each other up yeah because well the rules that we have have a lot of loopholes to do that everyone likes to get around i want to move on to the fiscal cliff. that we're talking about right way that we've heard from the i.m.f. they've given warnings to that that we've heard from the cvo as well that if we go off this fiscal cliff if all the tax cuts are allowed to expire and you know the budget cuts that were agreed upon last year of the debt deal are going to go in effect in january than the country's going off the fiscal cliff we're going to go back into a recession for at least the first half of two thousand and thirteen now it sounds like the democrats are going to say ok we're going to do that if you really want to take this tax battle as far as you want as far as you want to the republicans but is it even really that big of a deal the fiscal cliff how much of a cliff is that it is a hyperbolic metaphor to say the least that is not

a fiscal cliff come january first two thousand and thirteen it's more like a fiscal you know step it's not going to all of a sudden caused a dramatic calamity what it will do is it will mean middle class working class families will see lower amounts of money in their paychecks because a couple of key provisions expire the two percent payroll tax cut as well as the bush era tax cuts which certainly mean a lot to middle class families but economy wide that's not going to do anything right away and chances are anything that does happen if congress doesn't act by january second will be made up later on they were. retroactively restore a lot of those tax cuts at least to the middle class so overall there is no cliff to worry about to the extent that we should be making bad policy decisions now because come january first the world is going to blow it's a policy decision that i'm sorry but congress you agreed upon this you passed it just drives me crazy that now suddenly there's all this conversation about how

we're going to we're going to make sure that sequestration doesn't actually go into effect you pass this law so deal with it then don't just have you know some kind of a workaround but james just a last question here to you two so let's say that this happens let's say that all the tax cuts do in fact expire so then the people i think there that are going to feel the most her are going to be lower middle class americans and so then how republicans going to try to argue that it isn't really a purely ideological that if they're letting everyone suffer for the sake of the highest earners. honestly here's what i think is going to happen maybe anyway definitely if we go up the quote unquote cliff people are simply going to stop paying their taxes a lot of people are in debt they're hurting already is that is they view our tax system as fundamentally out of whack possibly even on just the i.r.s. is extremely unpopular they can arrest us all is a phrase that i think you'll start to hear if things really start to go sour people take the opportunity to not pay their taxes and just challenge the federal

government to do something about it well you know i think people will certainly be upset but most people pay their taxes at least most of the people that i care about through weekly deductions from their paycheck and they're not going to really have that option the people who can tax protester the ones who quite frankly can afford to pay higher rates of taxation good point i already signed on there already take it out of my page and i guess i guess i had last week i got to have it i want to thank you both for joining me tonight. i have time for a short break but when we come back a carrot and robert farley will be on the program discussing a round of foreign policy developments including what libya and mali can teach us about intervention be right back. well. it's technology innovation all the developments from

around russia we've got the future covered. all right so let's get into our second panel of the evening secretary of state hillary clinton is now in israel after visiting egypt where she was greeted by shoot throwing protesters who were chanting monica and after she was turned away by the coptic christian community because they felt that her support of mohamed morsi means that she's in his list and then a new op ed in the boston globe takes a look at how intervention in libya has inadvertently created a terrorist haven in mali so what should we learn again from intervention as the red cross to clear syria to be in a state of civil war and calls for action continue and then lastly we show you how the cable networks are still fear mongering away on iran joining me to discuss this

from our studio in new york is all the arab national security reporter for think progress dot org and via broadband is robert farley assistant professor at the university of kentucky and blogger at lawyers guns and money gentlemen thank you both for joining me tonight all right so let me just let me lay this out and start with clinton in egypt so first how it goes is we support this dictator for decades then they have a revolution obviously this is the very bridge version so that now they've had an election now the candidate from the muslim brotherhood is in power so now you have the secretary of state that has come for for a visit to meet with them and she's greeted by protesters she's told that she's in islam is how do you if you're hillary clinton i guess going to start with you ali is how to handle this whole thing. wasn't she handled it pretty well she come to made light about the shoes and the tomatoes getting thrown out or but she's in a difficult situation because they're keeping mubarak as a u.s. client there was untenable and then obviously there are

a lot of people with whom the muslim brotherhood president mohamed morsi who is duly elected is also a popular with but at this point the u.s. has no choice but to be friendly with whoever the elected government is and that's not going to be popular with the cops in egypt. but at the same time you know after you've had so much influence over a country you know so much say you could say over the leadership of the country for so long can you really step in robber and do what hillary clinton said which is say that you know we're not going to take political sides here and it's all you know it's all up to you guys to figure out you know we don't want to get in the middle of the political situation go ahead sorry read it right i think that's really the only thing you can say whether it's true or not is a different question but i think it was the right thing for her to say you know this is that we're not in the business of picking winners which is obviously wrong we wanted other people to win that's. but you know that we have to deal with

whoever won no matter what and we have to act as it were. with whoever won and i think that this is something that we've really found in a lot of places around the world whenever people have democratic elections that end up electing the wrong people and i think especially in a country that is as important as egypt in a country that just this whole host of reasons the united states has to maintain good relations with. sort of soft pedaling the criticism and. trolling to i guess make asako your comment about about the influence of the united states over the elections there was was the really the only way that the secretary had to go but there weren't any good options and you know she meant sort of the best out of a bad situation. all right so now i want to move on to another story and we'll kind of go back to israel and iran but first i want to talk about this ad by stephen kinzer in the boston globe where he's looking at the situation in mali but saying

that really is inadvertently is an effect of what happened in libya the two regs were a part of the market off these military that once we took them out they went back home to mali they managed to overrun the military and al qaeda has joined up and in essence it's created this sort of terrorist haven safe haven because of our intervention i mean is there any other way to argue around that is there any way to say that he's wrong ali. no i mean i think that that's that there is some definitely some kind of causal link there was a little bit of a perfect storm because the targets are based in southern libya as well as in northern mali and then also there was this coup that actually in mali that actually was about the to our group deleon as well where a lot of the generals and and sort of mid high level military officers wanted more resources to flood into our rebellion and actually by having a coup it sort of froze their war and then the rebels took over but yeah i mean a large part of that was the fact that we we essentially at least temporarily

destabilize the central government of libya and moammar gadhafi was a strong man who was able to keep hammerlock on the most of the country and when when the rebels had a free hand to help their brother and in northern mali they did and it's created this area that no longer has a state government control over it but are we supposed to say every time that there is a perfect storm or to certain point do you start once again maybe pointing to you experiences that you've had in the past where when you intervene where you take a lot of action if you if you want to talk about afghanistan and then pakistan becoming a safe haven if you want to talk about iraq and what a mess that's become now do are we supposed to i mean how many times if you get hit over the head until you start learning a lesson and start really thinking through the consequences of what intervention might result in. i mean i guess the good stuff was started sorry sorry guys all right let me get let me let me directly all start with robert. i'm going to

disagree just a little bit with all of you you know. with nato and western powers intervened in libya the situation was already a point of instability right that the libyan military had already effectively collapsed and he was using these tribes reports as mercenaries you know do we not intervened he probably would have run. probably would have run but it would have been very messy and there probably would have been referencing the entrance. and i think that that would have had a destabilizing effect as well on the surrounding countries and so you know i doubt that however much gadhafi was able to control the country. but for the rebellion that after the rebellion all bets were off and that there was really not a lot of chance that there was going to be a lot of stability in libya no matter what happened and so you know will that have led to the exact same state instability in mali i'm not sure but that's sort of the larger point about these interventions right that in all cases that we intervene to rethink about intervening they're already unstable right we were going to be you

know in super stable friendly happy countries but there's always something going on in these countries that it's about it's an intervention and we just don't know what would happen in the absence of that intervention but so you know taking that into account the fact that these are often already unstable areas we don't know exactly what will happen you know what lesson do you think i should be learned about intervention in that case how do you apply it to syria for example where now at this point you know the red cross has said that it has technically developed into a civil war. right and i think i think robert's point is totally salient and i think that one thing that they can zero actually missed in this op ed and he is right that while robert's right that this was already an unstable situation i think a cancer made a good point that it's true that in the u.s. we don't really talk through the consequences of these interventions that much or potential consequences and and one thing that kinzer didn't mention is that we also

by intervening you take a certain amount of agency and that's something that happened with this with doing an air war over libya is that you don't have the presence on the ground that once you've toppled the government you can take actual physical control of things like weapons depots and and for some sort of stability and i'm not saying that the u.s. should have gone in and invaded and occupied libya to be a peacekeeping force there but it's just that the airpower occurs to me to be a sort of way that you're asserting your country's influence somewhere but not actually taking any responsibility for what happens but you've become a player in that place. hi robert you know i'm going to let you get the last point on this too and in that sense i just want to bring in something you and i have discussed before which is you know we want to talk about libya we want to talk about mali but what about the fact that we have three thousand troops that are on their way to africa that are building up a number of bases in africa that we have a lot of special operations teams there that are going to be taking part in local conflicts where you know you could say that there are certain perhaps militant groups involved that are worried about their local problems but who knows if we

stick our nose in there might that become our problems well. i think it's actually true that. we said it was troops it was part of sort of broader africa project which is part of the united states being aware of. these countries all over africa . and we absolutely run the risk becoming involved in a whole host of different conflicts because countries that are waging war against rebels or who are you know concerned in the future about which we're going to rebels are going to use the training and equipment. to then you're right the reporting is ations and that potentially makes us even more involved in the fighting down the road so you know every time we get involved in something like this i think it's absolutely true that we don't necessarily think through the consequences i think it's special true because. if you people outside the pentagon know where any of these troops are. all right guys we got to wrap it up but thanks

for joining me tonight the point is i guess at the end of this that we never know how it's going to end up i guess life is always about taking some kind of chances but maybe when there's weapons and lives involved you should be a little bit more careful about it thanks. thank you there. are guys it's time for another break while we come back we'll have a special edition of you said i read it and i'll update you on bradley manning's pretrial hearings are scheduled to run throughout the week so find out what the prosecution and the defense will be arguing for this.